Emanuel withholds most records detailing push for speed cameras

David Kidwell, Bob Secter and Kristen MackChicago Tribune

Mayor Rahm Emanuel has refused for months to release public records that could shed light on his controversial speed camera plan while he persuaded state lawmakers and Gov. Pat Quinn to turn it into law.

Now that the mayor has released a small number of the requested documents, even that incomplete portrait raises new questions about how the plan was developed and sold.

The records, many of them heavily censored, offer clues into City Hall's misstatements about a pedestrian safety crisis, the role of a well-connected speed camera lobbyist and how the mayor linked the death of a little girl to his campaign for cameras even though the devices wouldn't have saved her.

Emanuel's successful campaign to legalize speed cameras near schools and parks provides a case study in how the hard-charging rookie mayor governs and at the same time offers a yardstick to measure his pledge to restore transparency and trust at City Hall.

The mayor, in a spirited interview in his City Hall office last week, said his camera push was "upfront and public" and will make the streets safer.

"I think what people want to know and they will judge me on, as you said the taxpayers, am I getting the job done?" Emanuel said. "They will hold me accountable, and their job is to see what I am doing on a day-to-day basis and to see if I am doing what I pledged to do. ... I am making government information available. I am making sure people have access to it. I am bringing back a level of trust."

The stakes are high. The new law means roughly half the city could be covered by automated devices that would tag speeders with tickets up to $100, potentially raising more than the $69 million annual take from red light cameras. Emanuel has framed the issue as a critical child safety initiative and suggested that people who question the initiative — including those who accuse him of a money grab — are insensitive to the plight of children.

During the 90-minute interview, Emanuel repeatedly accused the newspaper of downplaying the safety benefits of cameras by ignoring a city study that he said shows red light cameras have reduced nearby fatalities by 60 percent.

"I've had people call you with it, and you refuse to publish it," he said.

"If the report is wrong you should go analyze that report," Emanuel said.

But his press secretary later said the report could not be provided to the newspaper because key portions were "confidential."

The Emanuel administration used similar language to reject the vast majority of the newspaper's Oct. 27 Freedom of Information Act request for any administration records and correspondence that would explain the underpinnings of the speed camera plan.

The request covered internal communications, among them email messages, visitor logs, phone records, reports and memos. Administration lawyers cited a provision in Illinois' open records law allowing for — but not mandating — the withholding of "preliminary drafts, notes, recommendations, memoranda and other records in which opinions are expressed, or policies or actions are formulated."

Steve Patton, Emanuel's corporation counsel, said the city intends to adhere to the records law but sees no need to disclose more than required.

"If you've got a beef with that, then you need to take it up with the state legislature," he said.

The chief of staff to Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan, who arbitrates public records disputes, said the office encourages government agencies to be more forthcoming than the law requires.

"We advocate that public bodies should try to interpret any exemption with an eye toward disclosure," said Ann Spillane. "We encourage public officials to be thoughtful when interpreting it, but that said, the exemption is broad and the courts have interpreted it broadly."

As mayor, Emanuel has vowed to weed out aloofness and mystery from city government and make it more responsive and accessible to taxpayers. At Emanuel's direction, the city has posted on its website payrolls, databases and other records that long had been held out of general public view.

At the same time, however, Emanuel mounts a spirited defense of his need for some measure of secrecy in obtaining advice and formulating policy.

"I have to have the ability to have people tell me their opinions, and that is what every chief executive relies on, whether you are in the private or public sector, including your own newspaper," Emanuel said.

The mayor equated some public records requests to asking for a seat at the table. He scoffed at the notion that anything would get done if he didn't have leeway to work outside the glare of public scrutiny.

"I have been in an executive position, and — I mean this insulting so get it right — you haven't," said Emanuel, a former top aide to Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. "You have not been in the White House. You have not been in the mayor's office."

Email messages were a small part of the newspaper's documents request, but in the end were the only documents released. Of 165 specific emails requested, 140 were denied outright or delivered with all text blacked out. Heavy redactions were imposed on some of the 25 remaining emails.

The Tribune also has long-outstanding requests for similar records on two other major administration revenue initiatives: increases in water rates and the fees paid to renew vehicle stickers. No substantive documents have been forthcoming concerning those matters.

Near the end of the interview, Emanuel said he would reconsider releasing more records: "Between what you want and what I've got to do to be able to govern, we will find where we can find a happy middle ground."

Emanuel's truncated disclosure of speed camera documents makes it difficult to shed light on the origins of the speed camera policy. The mayor has declared he was moved to act by the pleas of police Superintendent Garry McCarthy and schools CEO Jean-Claude Brizard, the two officials most responsible for school safety.

"If it wasn't for the fact that both the police chief and the head of schools came to me and said that we have a problem that is distinct from other cities, I would not have pushed something forward just because I'm looking for another unpopular issue to tackle," Emanuel said last week.

That assertion runs against a bare-bones log of speed camera-related email correspondence involving administration officials over the summer and fall. The log, shorn of all content but sender, receiver, subject and date, was also prepared in response to the paper's open records request.

The log shows that Emanuel staffers swapped hundreds of emails on speed cameras over that time frame, but none of those was sent from or to McCarthy and Brizard — or for that matter Emanuel, himself. Aides to the police and school heads were copied only days before the administration went public with the plan in late October, the log shows.

One top administration official who shows up repeatedly in the log, going back to the very first email on speed cameras sent on May 31, is city Transportation Commissioner Gabe Klein. He has publicly taken credit for generating the speed camera idea.

Emanuel, in the interview, said the lack of emails doesn't mean the police and schools chiefs weren't responsible, only that he communicated with them by phone. The administration previously has declined a Tribune request to review Emanuel's phone records.

The logs also show lobbyists weighing in on the shape of Emanuel's legislative plan, among them Michael Kasper, an attorney who helped Emanuel last year fend off a residency challenge to his campaign for mayor. In Springfield, Kasper represents the interests of Redflex, the Australian camera vendor that supplies the city's red light equipment and could greatly benefit from the addition of speed cameras.

Kasper did not return a telephone message.

The records released to the Tribune raise questions about the accuracy of other administration claims. They included talking points used by Emanuel and surrogates to sell the camera program that highlighted this claim:

"Chicago has a higher percentage of pedestrian fatalities than other major U.S. and global cities — Chicago's pedestrian fatality rate is 68 percent higher than New York City's."

McCarthy repeated that claim while testifying for the mayor's bill at a legislative hearing in Springfield in October.

The claim is wrong, refuted by the city's own five-year study that shows Chicago with a lower pedestrian fatality rate than New York as well as most other large U.S. cities.

Also among the released material was a daylong email string among Emanuel public relations aides concerning the death of 6-year-old Diamond Robinson. The youngster was hit by a car late on Saturday, Oct. 29, as she crossed a South Side street headed to a Halloween party.

The Tribune reported on the accident on its website the next morning, and soon afterward, Emanuel's then-press secretary, Chris Mather, forwarded it to colleagues. As the email chain grew for hours, Mather and others attached comments that were mostly scrubbed from the copies supplied to the paper.

Days later at a news conference, Emanuel sought to link Diamond's death to his speed camera push.

"While we're speaking, Diamond Robinson, who was hit by a car near a school ... they're actually having her funeral," Emanuel said. "That is a reminder of what we're talking about today and the full price and consequences of what we're talking about today."

Emanuel's legislation, if it had been in effect, would not have protected Diamond. The accident occurred on a weekend, and the new law restricts use of cameras near schools to weekdays.

Jeanette Tucker, the girl's great-grandmother, said she backs the idea of speed cameras but realizes they would have done no good for Diamond.

"The speed cameras wouldn't have helped save Diamond's life," she said. "What you need is stop signs and lights."

Tucker said she was unaware that Emanuel had invoked her great-grandchild to promote speed cameras, adding that she was interested in learning why Emanuel's aides were so interested in the girl's death when it was so fresh.

"Yes, I would like to see what they said," Tucker said. "Can you tell me how I might do that?"